Real Estate For Atlanta Blog

As an agent in the trenches daily, I am often exposed to the most up to the minute data that can help me predict where I think the local housing market is headed in the near future. For example, when I see more hits on my web site, it is usually a good leading indicator that more buyers are out there with an interest in buying homes. The opposite is also true. What I’ve noticed lately has been rather surprising. 

Lately it seems like we were finally getting to a point where buyers were realizing that this is the opportunity to buy and perhaps the fence is not the correct place to be. Just as the traffic started to increase on my listings and web site, speculative announcements began to circulate in the media about potential upcoming legislation that is designed to stimulate the housing market. Buyers who were just about ready to write offers on properties began to put things on hold. Afterall, who wants to buy now when they are told that they might be able to get 4% interest rates or a $15,000 tax credit if they wait another month. The pre-announcement of this possible legislation has actually had the opposite effect on the market as it was designed to do.

I think that getting closure on what the stimulus bill(s) are going to be is more powerful than the bills themselves. Now that we seem to have gotten some closure on this, I am hopeful that this will begin to get things moving once again. The worst thing the government can do right now is announce possible legislation that might come to fruition as this will once again make everyone put everything on hold. I also believe that the currently approved legislation has too long of a timeline on it. What we need is legislation that will take buyers off the fence today - not by the end of the year.

bandit

As the overall economic climate gets worse,the crime rate usually rises. Unfortunately, even East Cobb is not immune to this. I’ve just heard reports of 2 separate incidents in East Cobb that surprised me. This kind of activity is seldom heard of in the neighborhood that these incidents happened in. 

Incident #1 was an attempted kidnapping on February 3rd. This took place in the Riverhill Subdivision. 2 perpetrators in a dark-colored Honda Accord approached the victim and grabbed her after she pulled her car into her garage. The victim was able to fight off the suspect and he fled the area on foot.

Incident #2 was a home invasion in the Ward Meade Farm Subdivision on February 10th. 2 armed men broke into a home thru the basement door, tied up the couple and robbed them. The couple was not hurt.

We should all be keeping a watchful eye out for our neighbors to keep these kinds of things from taking place. Thank goodness in both of these incidents the vicitms were not physically hurt.

Multiple Homes

Recently, Fannie Mae changed their guidelines so that investors could no longer have more than 4 investment homes no matter how good their credit and income is. 

This rule was created to help manage the risks for the banks. However, it seems they have finally come to the realization that perhaps cutting off your nose to spite your face is not good. By making this requirement, many investors who were well qualified and funded were prevented from buying additional homes even though they wanted to. This kept even more inventory and made it even harder to sell the foreclosed properties. Just a short time after this limit was put in place, it has now been lifted and investors can get up to 10 loans. However, the rest of the guidelines remain stricter than ever including:

720 minimum credit score

25% down payment for a 1-unit (30% for a 2-4 unit)

No mortgage delinquencies in the last 12 months 

6 months of reserves for each investment property

This will help a little and perhaps it’s a sign of the mortgage industry finally starting to realize that swinging the pendulum in the far opposite direction (guidelines that are too tight) is equally as bad as being too liberal (i.e. former easy lending practices). The right place to be is in the middle and the faster the banks realize that, the better off we’ll all be and the faster we’ll get through the “crisis”.

Quart Of Milk

Many home sellers have the perception that more marketing from their agent will compensate completely for the wrong price. Others think the opposite: low price will always compensate for lack of marketing. 

The truth is that both need to work together to make the sale. The home has to be priced correctly AND marketed correctly. Selling a home is not much different than selling anything else. The 4 P’s of marketing apply (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). The product is the house itself and the way it is staged, the place is the location of the property, promotion is the marketing. All of these work together to make a sale. For example, if your local supermarket takes out a full page ad in the newspaper to advertise a quart of milk for $50.00, nobody will buy it because it’s overpriced and all the advertising in the world won’t compensate for being so overpriced. On the other side of the coin, they can lower their price to 10 cents a quart for milk and with no advertising, nobody will know about it and they will miss the opportunity to maximize their sales volume by effectively telling the public about this great product at a great price.

If you want to know if your home will sell in this market, pretend you are a buyer looking in that area and price range and see if you can honestly say that your home presents the best value for potential buyers. Then, make sure you do everything possible to tell the public that yours is the best value.